'Awkward old bats have their purpose'

By Rachel Sylvester

12:00AM BST 08 Jul 2000

GWYNETH DUNWOODY is not what you could call a "Blair Babe". She wears floral dresses rather than tailored red suits. She would never read out a Millbank-drafted Parliamentary question or attend a "body image" summit. Pagers, she says, are just "silly". "I do have three but none of them work. What are they going to do about it?" In fact the MP for Crewe and Nantwich, chairman of the transport select committee, would be horrified to be associated in any way with the term "babe". "All that gave the impression that anybody who was over 50 was over the hill and half dead," she says. "A lot of women members are closer to a 42 hip than a 36 hip."

Which may be why Mrs Dunwoody, 70 this year, is becoming something of a cult figure in the House of Commons. It is not only that MPs love following her into the rebels' lobbies on issues as diverse as the sale of the air traffic control service to pensions, nor just that they adored her campaign for the return of Winnie the Pooh from New York to London.

Politicians whisper increasingly loudly that this longest-serving female MP would be the perfect replacement for Betty Boothroyd when she retires as Speaker. Downing Street's attempt to stamp on the idea has only given it more momentum. On this, Mrs Dunwoody says only that there "is no vacancy" - Miss Boothroyd is after all one of her best friends. But it is a rare moment of self-restraint. The MP, who was a trade minister in the last Labour government, is outspoken in her criticism of the Blair administration.

There is, she says a "lack of principles" at the heart of New Labour. "If [the Prime Minister] does know what he believes he doesn't articulate it in a way that ordinary party members understand. He certainly isn't marrying it in with the political solutions. Goodwill is not enough. Goodwill and Christian beliefs are very important but they don't constitute a political platform. If people don't know what your core beliefs are they get worried."

She is furious about Downing Street's "instant solutions" - such as proposals to take passports away from suspected football hooligans, and to frogmarch drunken yobs to cashpoint machines (an "aberration" in her view). "The Government feels it needs to be seen to be doing things and all really good governments just let it run and take considered decisions," she says. "Sometimes that will mean being complained about by the tabloid press but that is one of the hazards of government. If everybody tells you you're wonderful all the time then you're obviously doing all the wrong things. We all want everybody to like us but it doesn't work like that and once you get out of being a teenager you realise that."

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The problem, she says, is that the "Blair stamp" is the desire not to offend. "They think you must not say anything too firm or too definite or too unacceptable to the general public but I'm afraid if you're going to be positive you're going to upset people." In fact she believes that the backlash against the Government, by the Women's Institute among others, has been exacerbated by Mr Blair's tendency to sit on the fence.

"I think 'middle England' is a lot more tolerant of sensible things than they acknowledge. They should come out and say to people, 'All right, you may not like the idea of paying more tax but this is why I'm doing it.' I suppose it's a lack of confidence but I don't understand why a government with a majority this size is not confident enough to say things. I'm bewildered by why they don't boast about the things they're doing."

The ideological vacuum has, she believes, led to the trivialisation of politics. "Government is being conducted on the basis of personality not policies and you can't do that in British politics. We're not the Americans, we do not run political parties on the basis of one personality at the top. Nor should we."

This is why the current tensions in the Cabinet are so "dispiriting" to ordinary Labour Party members, she says. "Every government that exists has enormous rows, because you are talking about real power, but I think the sad thing is that in previous Labour governments they would have been about policy issues and now they're about personalities. Some ministers are so busy perpetuating their own internal battles - it's all on the basis of whether Mr A is annoyed with Mr B or has had a row with Mr C. That's a retrograde step."

She does not blame Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's spokesman, for undermining Mo Mowlam to the press. But, she says: "I do believe some briefing has taken place against individual ministers which is both unfortunate and ill-advised. Part of the difficulty is that there's a kind of substrata around the ministers who make it their business to go talking to journalists. They don't talk about policy because that would be difficult so they talk about the only other thing that's left to them, which is personality. It's like little boys. I think the Prime Minister will have to think very seriously about whether that's how he wants to proceed."

Ministers should stop fighting their battles in public through the press and start talking to each other around the Cabinet table, she says. "Cabinet government depends on arguing out policies at every level." On Europe, in particular, she is worried that the debate is being suppressed into a discussion of economics. "A common currency has enormous implications way beyond money. I'm very against people being taken into institutions which have not been tried and tested." Mrs Dunwoody, the daughter of a Labour general-secretary, is steeped in the traditions of politics. Her former husband John was an MP too and now two of her children are trying to find seats. But she says her father, Morgan Phillips, would be "horrified" by what the Blairites have done to his party. The "control freaks" at Millbank Tower are in danger of alienating their activists by removing virtually all their power.

"They don't trust the members - it's insecurity again. But people don't have to get involved in politics, they can put their coats on and go home at any point and they will. All leaders have to run ahead sometimes and sometimes push from the rear and the art of leadership is knowing when to do that. Macmillan's comment about 'Events, dear boy, events' is something that all PMs should have written up on the wall in large letters because you can only control things up to a point. Therefore it's best to acknowledge that you need everybody around you to be pulling in the same direction and that includes your political party."

There is a "lack of two-way traffic" in the Labour Party - both in the country outside and in the House of Commons, she says. "Tony Blair doesn't seem to like Parliament much. And because people don't see him here, because they don't get the impression that the Whips' Office and the Parliamentary Labour Party are conduits any more in the normal way, then they think the lines of communication has been lost. And once people believe you're not talking to them in private they will start yelling at you in public."

Mrs Dunwoody believes New Labour should treat the House of Commons with more respect. The MPs who are campaigning for the right to breastfeed their babies in committee are, in her view, "making idiots" of themselves. "The women in my constituency who work in the rag-trade factory or who stack shelves in a supermarket can't take a baby to work and breastfeed it. I have to say, being very lazy, my children were all breastfed until they were quite large because their mother would never have been capable of getting out of bed and fixing a bottle in the middle of the night. But there are many more important things for MPs to concern themselves about than the ability to breastfeed at your place of work."

Mrs Dunwoody's youngest child was eight by the time she was elected, so breastfeeding was not an issue, but the Commons' unsocial hours were a problem, particularly because her husband at the time also worked as an MP. She would not have dreamed of campaigning for shorter days as the younger generation have successfully done. "I thought you don't as a woman ask for special conditions. In my generation the assumption was that you made a choice, you either had a family or a career but you didn't have both. Conditions do have to change but what can't change is the number of hours that you have to put in to look at legislation."

She is concerned about the plans to stop all-night sittings and to timetable votes. "You are making laws that can ruin people's lives, and I'm afraid that time is not elastic," she says. "I'd love to go home every night at 10 o'clock but the reality is that if you've got a certain amount of work to do it will only fit a certain space. You cannot cut debates without damaging the rights of people to have an input." She does not mind Eric Forth keeping MPs up all night - Dennis Skinner did the same when the Conservatives were in power. "It would be very short sighted to imagine that the exigencies of government give you the right to change fundamental rights," she says. "This is the place where major decisions are taken and whether you like it or not those who attempt to undermine its real power must be very clear what they're doing. They should remember the Chinese curse - do not ask for something because you may be granted it."

Mr Blair has not asked to see Mrs Dunwoody since he was elected Prime Minister - despite the fact that she chairs the Commons committee dealing with one of the most important policy areas for the Government. He would prefer to meet the editor of the Sun. But she has a word of warning for the Prime Minister. "He would find it beneficial to talk to his backbenchers more frequently," she says. "They will say I'm just an awkward old bat and you should ignore her. But awkward old bats have their purpose." If she becomes Speaker it could become a more interesting purpose yet.